When I first knew Claire, she was having a really hard time. Ashley, my first, very bad choice of girlfriend, was being really mean to her. Claire felt and looked like a complete loser. Hair all over her face. Huge baggy clothes. A constant scared-rabbit expression on her face.
It was a complete miracle that I realised she was actually very pretty, and her mousey hair was shiny and soft. And even I felt a bit weird sometimes about fancying her, because generally she looks about ten.
But this Claire is different. This Claire has short spiky blonde hair, smudged grey eye liner and dark mascara. She’s wearing skinny jeans and silver hoops in her ears. Her lips shine with gloss. She looks at least fourteen and just like the kind of girl that might be going out with someone as cool as Joe. If I was still Joe. . .
I stand up and manage to find some words.
‘Hey. Umm. Claire.’
She just stands there looking at me. What’s she
thinking? She looks gorgeous and obviously I like it, obviously it’s great, but she doesn’t look like myClaire, the Claire I’ve missed so much. What if she’s changed as much inside as she has on the outside? What if she thinks I’ve totally changed too – and not for the better?
‘Hello Joe,’ says Claire’s friend. I just about recognise her as Zoe, used to be in 8P, definitely fancied me. ‘You never told us there was another one like you at home.’
Archie gives her what he thinks is a winning smile. ‘I’m Joe’s cousin,’ he says, smoothly accepting my name change without a blink. ‘Who are you?’
‘Never mind that,’ I snap. ‘Archie, what’s going on?’
‘Well, as you didn’t have Claire’s number I left a message for her at the youth hostel reception,’ he said. ‘You must have come straight over,’ he adds to the girls.
‘Look,’ says Claire, ‘we only have one hour and then we have to get back to the youth hostel. And I really need to talk to you.’ She’s really brisk and almost bossy and again . . . I don’t know . . . she’s just not very Claire.
‘It’s OK,’ says Archie, ‘We’ll meet you at the hostel. Let me give you some pocket money, young man.’
So I have to suffer the total humiliation of having Archie hand me £20 in front of Claire and Zoe – who’s finding this all very funny. As we head out of the door, I hear him offering to buy her a drink.
I forget all about them once we’re out of Starbucks. I’m standing there with Claire, and staring at her face, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I can’t believe it. And there’s nothing stopping us hugging, but somehow we don’t, we just stand there and it’s so confusing . . . so strange . . . and she’s looking a bit worried, which makes her look more like herself and I want to tell her that’s it’s OK, there’s nothing to worry about, everything will be fine, I’m here to look after her.
But my head is full of worry as well, and that’s what comes out.
‘Claire . . . I shouldn’t really be here,’ I say. ‘My mum’ll be on the phone to your parents right now, they’ll probably have caught up with us by tonight . . . can you tell them not to say anything?’
‘Have you run away?’ she asks. ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea even to mention your name to my parents, really, else they’ll probably turn up too.’
Great. Nothing’s changed. The last time I saw them, Claire’s mum was calling me ‘streetwise’ – meaning ‘scum’ – and her dad was pretty keen to hit me. I’d kind of hoped she might have talked them round by now.
‘I have tried to talk to them,’ she says, ‘but a lot of evil gossips have been stirring things up.’
I’m not really surprised. When people don’t have the facts they start making stuff up. The less they know, the bigger the lies grow.
‘Everyone thinks they know all about us. And all about you. And they don’t think very good things.’ Her voice is even, but she’s looking into the distance and slightly frowning, and I can see that she’s had a pretty horrible time.
‘Claire, I’m really, really sorry. . .’
‘It’s OK. It’s a bit annoying sometimes, but it’s certainly changed the way people think of me at school. Nothing I can’t cope with. And there are some people, like your friend Brian, who don’t believe everything they’re told. Anyway, I thought I might as well change my image as well. I seem to have failed at being invisible.’
‘You look great,’ I tell her, ‘You always did.’ It’s good to see the lines on her forehead disappear.
‘So you like it?’ she asks.
‘What you look like doesn’t matter to me,’ I say, and she looks away and I’m so stupid, I’m so stupid, I said totally the wrong thing. But I can’t think how to put it right without sounding really false.
I don’t fancy another Starbucks-type place; I want this time to be special. I want to get it right. And then I see a sign that looks interesting.
‘Look. . .’ I nudge her, ‘Let’s go in there.’
‘What?’ she says, ‘Why?’
‘It’ll be warm, and we can get a drink, and no one that we know will be there . . . and it could be fun . . . please, Claire. . .’
She looks at me like I’m a lunatic, but she follows me in and starts giggling as I buy two tickets. The woman on the desk looks a bit uncertain, but takes my money.
‘This has got to be the weirdest date ever,’ says Claire, but I say, ‘No, wait and see, it’ll be good.’
And then we walk in and every person in the room is staring at us. We’re the youngest people there by about a hundred years. Fair enough really, because you don’t get many teenagers buying tickets to a tea dance.
A bloke comes over to us. ‘Oy,’ he says, ‘Clear off. We don’t want any trouble from your sort.’
‘We’re not here to cause trouble,’ I say and Claire smiles at him and pulls off her jacket and asks politely if there’s a coat rack, which is clever because he starts showing her some hooks on the wall and forgets that we’re undesirables.
When I knew her before Claire was always hiding, swamped by huge shirts and jumpers, hair messed up over her face. But now her clothes have changed as much as her face. Her pale grey top has long sleeves, but clings to her body. And her body – well, either she’s grown a lot in the chest area, or there’s some padding going on, or she’s had some of those implant things.
It’s like she’s in disguise, she’s pretending, she’s trying to be someone else . . . just like I have to do all the time. Or is this the real Claire, the Claire that was hidden? I don’t know. How can I tell?
It’s too weird to start falling for this completely new Claire when I still love the old one. I wanted to help her change. And she’s done it all by herself. She didn’t need me after all.
‘So,’ she says, smiling up at me. ‘Are we going to dance?’ And I take hold of her hand and slip my arm round her waist and say, ‘Let’s have a go.’
I would prefer better music – although Frank Sinatra is a favourite of my gran’s, so at least I know these songs – and we do stumble over each other’s feet a bit, until she gets the idea that I know what I’m doing and relaxes and lets me lead her. But the twirling and the movement and the looking into her eyes – it’s just what I hoped for.
Never mind that we’re in a church hall, and there’re no sequins or glitter balls, no band, no Bruce Forsyth. Actually it’s good that there’s no Bruce, he’s my least favourite bit of Strictly Come Dancing. All I want is to give her something to cancel out the gossips with their dirty minds and lazy mouths. Glamour and romance, that’s what I’m aiming for.
And she does get it, because she’s smiling and she whispers in my ear, ‘What do you think the judges are going to say?’ and I say, ‘Oh, even Craig’ll love us,’ and I lift her up – she’s so light, her hair smells of strawberries – and try a spin, American-Smooth-style, which makes both of us a bit giddy and reminds me that I’ve got a dodgy ankle and I’m quite glad when the song ends and I can put her down.
It’s then that I realise that all the old folk have stopped dancing to watch us, and some of them are clapping. One old lady has her hanky out. ‘Well done,’ she calls, ‘It’s so lovely to see young people aren’t all muggers and vandals.’
We go and get cups of tea and biscuits and sit down at one of the little tables scattered around the dance floor. Claire is laughing at me. ‘I wouldn’t have put you down for a Strictly fan,’ she says.
‘My gran is the biggest Strictly fan in the world,’ I say. ‘And she does salsa classes, and line dancing, and she did ballroom before she had kids.’
I pause. And then I tell her one of my darkest, deepest secrets. ‘She sent me to ballroom classes when I was six, and I went for two years. But you’re not to tell anyone. Especially Carl and Brian.’ It doesn’t matter if I’m not at their school any more. I’m not having them taking the mick.
‘Maybe you’ll be on Strictly one day,’ she says. ‘They have athletes, don’t they? When you’ve finished winning medals.’
‘Yeah right. First I have to have a life again.’ And I bring her up to date on what’s happened since I last saw her.
She doesn’t want to talk about Alistair. ‘Ellie was so upset,’ she says, and she changes the subject quickly. She’s most interested in my dad. She’s got loads of questions about him, and I can’t answer any. I don’t know what job he does, or where he lives, or whether he’s married or what music he likes.
‘It’s like you’ve decided not to be interested in him,’ she says, disappointed, and I say, ‘I have been ill, actually, I was in hospital overnight.’
‘Yes but even so, Joe, it’s your dad and you’ve never met him before.’
‘Hmm.’ I say, ‘Did I tell you that my grandad speaks French like he comes from France?’ But she’s not interested in Patrick, and she says, ‘You need to get to know your dad. Maybe he’s good at languages too.’
And then she says, ‘Joe, I have a lot of things to ask you about. That email you sent me . . . you can’t do that. You can’t dump something like that on me when I don’t know when I’m going to see you again.’
‘I’m here now, aren’t I?’ I say, sulkily. I grasp her hand. ‘Please Claire, can’t you just forget about it? It was just a stupid email. It didn’t mean anything.’
‘Of course not,’ she says indignantly, ‘It means a lot. I need to know what you meant – who have you hurt? Why are you lying?’
‘It’s a bit complicated,’ I start, and then she looks at her watch. She gasps. ‘Oh God – I should have been at the hostel an hour ago. I’m going to be in such trouble.’ She slides her hand in her pocket and takes out her phone. ‘Oh no . . . look . . . seven missed calls. Mr Hunt will be furious. Come on we’d better go.’
‘Mr Hunt?’ She can’t mean it. She’s here on a school trip with Mr Hunt, my old form tutor, the one who hates me, the one who will remember every detail of my two suspensions and hasty exit from her school. He thinks I’m a bully . . . someone who bullies girls for sex. He’ll call the police if he sees me within twenty miles of Claire.
‘Can we can talk later? Claire – please—’
She’s putting on her jacket, and buttoning it up. She takes her time over it, fingers fumbling and I realise her eyes are full of tears.
‘What . . . what’s the matter?’ I ask uncertainly. I want to pick her up again, kiss her tears away. But she’s rubbing her face and looking away from me.
‘We’ll have to talk later,’ she says. ‘You need to explain . . . what you meant. And I can’t really see what’s going to happen after that, because either you were lying to the police or you were lying to me. Which is it?’
I open my mouth. I want to tell her the whole story, everything I’ve done, right and wrong.
But she says. ‘Don’t even bother trying to answer that.’